


Washing Machine Heart

by nightstarry



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alice is her assistant, F/F, Mentions of drugs and alcohol, Romance, Sexual Tension, Swearing, Twilight AU, a fast slow burn i guess, bella is an actress, cause it’s a one shot, hehe, lesbians!!!!, slow burn?, so much cute banter ah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:42:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29604012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightstarry/pseuds/nightstarry
Summary: From day one, Bella Swan knows hiring Alice Cullen as her personal assistant will be a mistake, but she is in dire need of one before she tumbles off a cliff and the press laps it up straight from her limp palm. Alice is perky, high-pitched, and annoyingly responsible, but her eyes also look like melting honey and the sound of her voice scratches an inch deep in Bella’s brain like nothing else does. She may or may not be screwed.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Bella Swan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	Washing Machine Heart

**Author's Note:**

> the ending is genuinely so cheesy i wasn’t sure what to write for it but the rest is fine lmao

“There’s only one applicant remaining, Miss Swan.” 

Bella groaned, dropping her heavy halo of chestnut curls into her hands, deft fingertips massaging her head in prodding circles. The persistent ghost of a headache had been haunting her since she had awoken hot and sweaty that morning in a foreign bed of empty cans and bottles with a major throbbing bouncing around her skull. Red splots streamed like a familiar bloody splatter left in Michael Meyers’ wake behind her puckered eyelids. “Send them in.” 

And make it fucking quick, trailed Bella’s thoughts after the uncomfortably loud echo of her previous words.

The telltale sound of platform heels click-clacking against the polished porcelain floor was Bella’s sign to - regretfully - jerk her head out of her cupped hands and blinking upwards, assuming she had to look at her interviewee in order to conduct an interview. Besides, Charlie would murder her if she didn’t definitively and permanently hire an assistant by the end of the day. 

“Hi, Miss Swan, I’m Alice Cullen,” the woman before her leant over Bella’s desk to set her resume down upon it and shake her hand with a remarkably thin and spindly hand, allowing Bella an ample glimpse of her cleavage from the gilded restraints of her smart little black dress. Upon further examination, she was exceedingly waifish and fairy-like, with choppy ebony locks that curled up and pointed outwards and a handsome nose decorated with an almost strategically placed pink flush - like a doll for a small child that had been painted and sewn together just for Bella. What arguably stood out the most was the velvety choker wrapped around the curve of her neck, hanging from it a deep crimson amulet that brought out the marigold hue of her eyes remarkably. 

“Hello, Alice,” replied Bella in a bored tone, the initial rush of the sighting of an unusually pretty woman beginning to wear off, allowing the thumping of her headache to return and entrap a significant chunk of her attention. “Well, what are you waiting for? Dazzle me.” 

—

“And just where do you think you’re going?” 

“Fuck!” Bella jolted midair, one hand flying to clutch at her heart and the other to claw into the roots of her hair. The source of the unsettling jumpscare was a tiny woman reclined facilely in an obnoxiously purple flower patterned plush chair - Bella made a mental note to have it thrown out, it was burning her retinas out of her skull - one leg crossed over the other and a pair of fluttering hands tapping impatiently at the plum tinted armchair. “Give a warning, would you, Alice? I had no idea you were here - I think I felt myself jump out of my own skin.” 

Alice stilled the blurry drumming of her fingers in favor of crossing her arms over her chest. What a shame, the crass corner of Bella’s brain snorted, it was such a lovely chest. “You didn’t answer my question.” 

“Out,” deadpanned Bella. 

Leaping lithely from her professional seating position atop the chair, Alice loped towards Bella, clucking her tongue disapprovingly. “A party at this time of night, interesting.” 

“C’mon, it’s only eleven-thirty. Besides, I never said it was a party.” 

“You didn’t have to.” Taken aback by the sudden lack of distance Alice had placed between them, Bella stepped back cautiously only for Alice to take another step forward so that they were inches away from Alice’s nose grazing the curve of Bella’s jutted out bottom lip. Bella would have been lying through gritted teeth if she had said she wasn’t intimidated, even by the non-threatening portrait the innocent eyed, much shorter woman posed. “You think I didn’t conduct any research privy to being hired? I wanted to be prepared. I’ve read hundreds of tabloids with your very name splashed across the front cover. They all involve parties and none of them contain anything very good about you.” 

Bella huffed, then regretted it because who knew what her breath smelled like and Alice was close enough to have gotten a nice whiff of it. “That’s all fake, you know. People gossiping for a quick buck.”

“Maybe, but you have an audition tomorrow. I’m not gonna let you waltz off to go get shit faced and bomb it. ‘Twilight’ is already predicted to be a hit, all you need to do is land the lead, which you’re not gonna be able to do when you’re impossibly hungover and likely still high off your ass.” 

“I think I’m gonna hate you.” 

Alice smirked and nearly floated away, annoyingly self-satisfied even without an open declaration of defeat. Perhaps she knew that Bella wasn’t the type to concede when her pride was involved. At the very least she would deny and avoid. “You’ll thank me later.” 

—

“No, thank you.”

“You need to get some vegetables in you. They sharpen your eyes, now, that comes in hand, doesn’t it?” Aice cooed, wiggling a baby carrot around midair like a spaceship as if Bella was a fussy child refusing to finish her dinner. 

“Yeah, really handy considering I’m currently wearing blood red contacts. Can carrots help make them any redder? I feel like they’re not close enough to the exact shade of blood I’m trying to mimick.” 

“Hardee har har.”

The intercom of Bella’s trailer crackled violently, a voice tearing through the fuzziness. “Bella on set in five, please.” 

“Gotta go, Judy Moody,” Bella made to slip from her chair, but Alice caught one of her bony shoulders to restrain her. 

“Not so fast!” Before Bella could react, Alice stuffed the baby carrot into her half opened mouth and bent before her, squinting as she began to dab at the tender skin of Bella’s under eyes with a beauty blender and what felt like a significant amount of tacky liquid concealer. “Your dark circles are Tim Burton level today.”

“Wa’th u’ la’,” Bella choked out as she struggled to chew the baby carrot. She didn’t want to deliberately attempt to recall the last time she had eaten a carrot, because it wouldn’t be enjoyable. She swallowed, smacking her lips just to annoy Alice. “Was up late.” 

“With Edward, I’d wager?”

“How’d you know?” Bella asked exaggeratedly. She and her co-star Edward Masen had made no secret of their steamy and pointed onset romance, and since Alice had tacked on ‘roommate’ as an additional to ‘personal assistant’, they spent many a morning awkwardly staring across the breakfast table at a smug Alice in a low cut nightgown slathering an obscene amount of cream cheese onto the last raisin bagel.

“Sometimes when you don’t sleep, I don’t either.” 

It had been meant to be a jab, but Bella’s eyebrows still jumped suggestively. “Were you listening, Al?” 

“It’s hard to block out,” Alice mumbled in protest, proceeding to poke Bella painfully in the eye with the damp beauty blender when she had the nerve to laugh mockingly.

“Alice likes my sex noises!” 

“Bella eats shit!” 

“Real creative, darling,” Bella rolled her eyes and shed the shimmering second skin of her silk robe, balling it up carelessly and shoving it at Alice. 

“I’ll be sure to be extremely graphic when explaining to your director why only one of your eyes is all purple underneath and your neck has more makeup than your face!” 

— 

“What the hell were you thinking?” Alice demanded angrily, shoving Bella through the doorway of their New York apartment, who stumbled and caught herself on the hall table that was home to a decorative vase of water lilies, which teetered and went flying to the floor with a hollow sound as it landed. Thank god they were fake - even the vase was plastic.

Bella only giggled, losing herself in the rapid fire rise and fall of the circulating laughter and forgetting how to shut up.

“Stop laughing!” 

“You’re scary,” Bella wedged the tip of her index finger between the blunt edges of her front teeth, still not ceasing her now shrill giggles. 

“Answer me right now, Isabella Swan. I thought you were gonna try to be more responsible from now on. I thought it was working.” 

“Eddie - Edward broke up wif’me.” Bella hiccuped. 

The corners of Alice’s angry amber irises softened and she reached to cup Bella’s elbow in her soft hand, drawing nearer. “Oh, sweetheart.” 

This brief but gentle way Alice handled her punctured straight through drunk Bella’s hard exterior and she began to blubber, tears wetting the apples of her cheeks before they had even begun to pool beneath her eyelids. 

“Hey, sorry, I’m sorry, Bells. Why don’t we get you nice and cleaned up?” 

Bella nodded a childish ‘yes’ through sobs and Alice wrapped an arm around her, skimming a comforting palm up and down Bella’s upper arm as she led her to the bathroom. Alice then knelt to start the water, turning it up to max heat - Bella’s personal favorite temperature - and pouring a generous amount of chamomile scented bubbles in. Bella had kicked off her stilettos but struggled uselessly against her evergreen minidress until Alice could swoop in to unzip it, disconnecting the necklace hanging between her collarbones, slipping off every one of her rings and setting them aside before helping to ease her into the steaming bathtub.

Bella immersed herself in the shiny, pink tinted bubbles, looking up through her eyelashes when Alice asked, “Would you like to talk about it?” 

Bella shook her head sloppily, but still began to speak anyways, with length pauses between each word and even in the middle of them. “Was so quick, I barely noticed he had done it. He was quiet, but ev’ryone s- saw. Ev’ryone knew. What did I do wrong, Alice?”

“Not a damn thing, Bells.” Alice’s voice was so smooth and tender, it scratched an itch deep in Bella’s brain with gusto. “He just doesn’t know what’s good for him.” 

“H- ” - a hiccup - “he will want me back soon, right Alice? Can’t be gone for long.” 

Alice looked sad, but she also looked hazy. “Why don’t you just relax for now, okay Bells? How does that sound?” 

“M’sounds good.” Bella settled deeper into the water, eyelids flitting closed of their own accords. They were too heavy to continue holding up, even though when they were open she could still see Alice, and look at how pretty she was. She wanted to part her lips and tell Alice that, but her jaw was locked, and she was too tired to keep thinking. 

—

“Nervous?” 

“I’ve been on the red carpet before, Alice.”

Aice whisked her hand through the air dismissively with a jingle of her many silvery bracelets. “Whatever. This is different. You were barely but a child star, and now you’re full fledged movie actress.” 

Bella laughed teasingly, forgetting for a moment the panging nervousness that secretly was plaguing her. “‘Barely but a child star?’ That’s some Jane Austen shit right there, Cullen.”

“The fact that you just compared that to Jane Austen is extremely concerning. Should we stop by your therapists’ office before we get out?” 

Sticking her tongue out in juvenility, Bella said, “I hate to break it to you, but I’m the one that actually reads Jane Austen, so stop trying to act all snobby. It’s not a good look for you.” 

The car slid to an almost undetectable stop, and Bella’s ears fully accepted the muffled shutters of cameras and clamoring of people. 

Alice stuck her hand out and squeezed Bella’s own reassuringly, and Bella swore she saw stars. When the friction of Alice’s velvety skin had been retracted, Bella blinked them away furiously, hoping it appeared to Alice as an unassuming bat of her eyelashes. “You’ll be perfect, Bells.”

Without a second worry about cracking the heavily coated matte of Bella’s blaring crimson lipstick, she flashed a cocky grin. “Of course I will, Al.” 

—

“I know what you are.” 

“Say it. Out loud.” 

“I honestly can’t believe I ever had to kiss that greasy slimeball,” Bella shuddered quietly, head ducked to the right so only Alice could hear her, the rest of the audience surrounding them enraptured with the images flashing across the huge screen before them. 

“Not to mention you did much, much more than that,” retorted Alice. “And I had to suffer through it.”

“Alice liked my sex noises!” Bella whispered in a sing-song tone. 

“You wish.” Their faces were very close. It reminded Bella of the very first time they had ever disagreed, and how intimidated she had been by the petite, scary brunette. If asked, she would have scoffed that she had never been intimidated by Alice since, but in that moment she was more terrified than she had ever been in her entire life. In the blue tint from the screen, Bella watched Alice’s eyes flick downward at her lipstick smeared lips, then back up to make hard eye contact. 

When they kissed, it was cold and sweet and felt red in a way that nothing else felt red - Bella caught shards of blurry red spots dancing across the backs of her eyelids. She gripped the back of Alice’s head and buried her fingers in the dark fairy spikes as Alice deepened the kiss. Everything around them melted down slowly like the leisurely fade of a sunset until it was just Bella and Alice. 

— 

“That’s what you’re wearing?” 

“Why so judgemental?” 

Alice arched a thin brow. “It seems a little revealing for prime time. I’m not sure if Kimmel’s gonna appreciate that.”

Throwing her head back and laughing, Bella shimmied closer to the other woman, slinging her arms around the shoulders that were significantly farther down than her own. Lowering her head, she nipped at the curve where neck met shoulder, peeking out above the collar of a tasteful lavendar blouse equipped with the loveliest puffed sleeves. Twirling the looping string of pearls that completed her girlfriend's outfit, Bella mumbled, “I’ve got a date afterwards, that’s why.”

“Really? How unfortunate.” 

“No shit. My stupid personal assistant scheduled it. Want me to stand her up?” 

“That’s gonna be a no.”


End file.
